Entering the Fifth Dimension: A Twilight Zone Podcast

Marika Sila, from last week’s “A Traveler” episode, yes, Sgt. Yuka, talked with us and gave an inside look at her experiences auditioning for—and making choices how she approached—her role. We enjoyed her immensely and felt honored she shared her story about walking the Red Path now and teaching other indigenous people how they can live healthier lives.

Discussion for this week’s episode, “The Wunderkind,” questions not only the direction of Raff and Oliver as they head straight to the White House, but we are getting afraid the series may be getting too far off course and we can’t predict where it will end up—hopefully not on an operating table where only “no old doctors” will be able to save it. Let us know what your thoughts. Are we off the rails or is the series?

Super talented Glen Morgan of X-Files writing and executive producing fame gets back to his writing desk this week to pen the rebooted Twilight Zone’s 4th Episode, “A Traveler.” Morgan’s tale cleverly creates an Us Against Them theme where the viewers get to see from the murky perspective lens of the Twilight Zone, who truly is “Us” and who is “Them.” Please join Darrell and Robert as they discuss brother Jack’s drunken, yet all too truthful sober warning to his smart, strong, and beautiful sister, Sargent Yuka, “...unless you are the lead sled dog, the view is always pretty much the same.” We also have many of our questions about the reboot addressed in a Glen Morgan interview that Darrell found, and Robert nearly falls off the deep end with excitement as he gets to make all the connections to this episode with his idol monster-hunting skeptic hero, Carl Kolchak, of the 1970’s NightStalker series.

Without the constraints that often limited what Rod Serling could do, Jordan Peele get's to take a full head of steam as he tackles the subject of racism. Join Darrell and Robert as we discuss all the Easter Eggs Darrell finds and Robert misses, and become all too familiar with the phrase, “you may not know this about me, but I haven’t seen very many movies.” But seriously, this episode hit hard for both of us. Darrell forcing a timeout for himself while watching it, and Robert often forgetting it was a Twilight Zone episode because so much about it held truth. We got a great listener feedback comment to ponder and learned a couple cool things about Black Lives Matter. Finally, as always, Darrell gave us all some homework to go watch previous TZ episode tie-ins that make the experience richer.

A podcast about a TV show about a podcast? A TV episode inspired by a TV episode? We're full meta this week as we discuss, “Nightmare at 30,000 feet.”

Robert and Darrell try to decide if this was just a nightmare by the main character, an alternate universe where space travel to Mars is commonplace but people still listen to podcasts, or did Justin lose it and he really is fully to blame for the plane crash. Much love is given to Dan Carlin, who narrates the episode’s podcast recording. We loved all the supporting actors, the music, the lighting and maybe loved all that too much because we couldn’t guess who the Air Marshal was. Luckily for us our Talking Tina segment’s listener feedback covered us.

We discuss PTSD and we salute Jordan Peele’s new show and the well placed diversity we’re seeing in both new episodes. If our podcast starts predicting the events happening around you in real time, I suggest you start asking some obvious questions like, “Am I in the Twilight Zone?,” or at least, “Hey will someone else listen to this weird recording? I promise I don’t have lice!!!

Here it is!! Season 1: Episode 1, The Comedian. The long wait is over. Join Darrell and Robert as they discuss the episode’s hits and misses, former Twilight Zone connections, current news, and science and culture topics related to and inspired by the show.

Was a Twilight Zone Episode about stand up comedy supposed to be funny? All things are possible in the you-know-where. Stand Up terminology to follow on purpose, Darrell slays us pointing out a ton of old show Easter eggs. Robert crushes with his knowledge of Classic Greek comedy and drama theory —and notices he is a little too much like Rena’s mentor/friend who gets what’s coming to him. Darrell is especially impressed with the soundtrack and both guys do a deep cut as they talk about the nature of what true redemption is and should Samir be fully redeemed by his self sacrifice?

Talking Tina segment listener’s feedback made us reflect if we can handle more episodes of TZ dropping explicit language. And speaking of language, Robert completely nerds out talking about Drew Carrey’s library book on joke writing that sparked Drew’s career and gave him the discipline he needed to craft his act. At no point has Drew ever said, “...a well regulated….”

Welcome to The Fifth Dimension! There are a LOT of fun moments and clues in the epic Super Bowl commercial and we're here to help make sense of much of it. Robert and Darrell share some insights they've gleaned about the first 6 episodes of the new Twilight Zone series, as well as give a preview of what upcoming episodes of the podcast will be like.